Many payments, such as but not limited to those for child care, donation pledge commitments, membership renewals and other types of non-profit financial transactions are presently still made by check. Current processes of billing for and collecting such payments are often inconvenient, for both the payer and the collecting organization. Attempts to introduce more automated means of payments, such as preauthorized credit card and direct bank debit (ACH) payments, have had limited success due at least in part to the reluctance of payers to trust and agree to such methods.
Many systems for online payment require payers to login to an online system to display charges and make payment. This requires payers to register, remember login information and generally reduces the likelihood that payers will utilize such a system. Other systems that don't require a login typically require the payer to enter all of the data each time they wish to make a payment. Entry of data each time increases the likelihood of entry error. Errors in entry may incur extra costs for declined or unsuccessful transactions and increase payer frustration. Entry errors are especially problematic for ACH payments where there is currently no system for real-time validation of the account information entered, and where the necessary bank routing and account numbers are potentially difficult for the payer to be certain of.
Thus, there is a need to adapt numerous new and evolving technologies to provide a much simpler method of allowing payers to initiate one-time and recurring payments by credit card or ACH payment with a minimum of effort. This method would also increase payer confidence so that organizations could encourage payers to more readily sign-up and transition to preauthorized collection of payments due.
Use of a token, including use of a personalized hyperlink or secure URL, is taught by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/215,122 for “METHOD AND SYSTEM TO PROCESS PAYMENT”, filed on Jun. 25, 2008 by Douglas Schoenberg. It would be beneficial in the method and system presented by this application to hide the data being passed as part of the secure URL and to generate a short and simple code that represents the underlying data.